Now the Engine answers questions about a mandate with the source attached. Ask what the buyer was told about customer concentration in week three, and the answer comes back with the document, clause and page it was drawn from.
Every adviser we’ve worked with kept a shadow file: a spreadsheet, a folder of drafts, a set of notes on what went to whom. It existed because the data room couldn’t be trusted to say where a figure came from.
The record was never the problem, retrieval was. So we built the citation layer on top of the same deal record the eleven stages already write to, not beside it.
Why we built the citation layer
A wrong figure in diligence isn’t a formatting error. It’s a price adjustment, a warranty, or a week of counsel time. An answer without a source is a confident guess, and no adviser will sign their name under it.
- The record holds the working. Statements, adjustments and the documents behind them sit in one record, so you can always trace a figure to the paper it came from.
- Retrieval carries the reference. Nothing gets summarised without a pointer. Where the Engine can’t find a source, it says so instead of filling the gap.
- Permissions hold. The layer only reads what the asking party is entitled to see. A buyer can’t reach vendor material through a question.
"The first time it returned the clause with the number, I stopped keeping my own copy of the file. That had never happened on a deal before."
Corporate finance adviser, sell-side mandate
Quote given during early access. No compensation was provided for this comment.
What the layer does on a mandate
Three parts, all running on the record the mandate already keeps. None of it asks your team to file anything twice.
1. Indexing the record
Every document that lands on the mandate is read once and indexed against the stage it belongs to. Statements, contracts, leases, employment schedules and the vendor’s own working files sit in one index, so a question never needs to know which folder holds the answer.
2. Retrieval with a source
The answer is built from what the index can support. Each sentence carries the document and page behind it, and the reference opens the paper at that point, not at the top of a file.
3. The release log
Questions and answers are logged against the party that asked. At completion the log reads as a clear account of what was disclosed and when, the record counsel always wanted and rarely got.
Delivering for the mandate
Diligence is the stage where a process either holds or unravels. Cited answers turn it from a hunt through folders into a conversation about the deal, and leave a trail that stands up after completion.
The layer is live for early-access advisers across the Diligence and Q&A stages, and reads the same record the Financials and Valuation modules write to.
Answers you can take to the buyer
The citation layer sits inside the Diligence module, on the same record as every other stage.
Explore the Diligence moduleAuthor: The M&A Engine team
The M&A Engine team builds and runs the platform. Between them they’ve carried sell-side mandates in the UK lower mid-market, and every stage in the lifecycle exists because one of those processes needed it, not because a feature list called for it.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and is not legal, tax, financial or investment advice. Figures and timings described reflect mandates run on the platform and are not a projection of any future transaction. M&A Engine does not act as an adviser to any party to a transaction.